Paris Fashion in the 1950s

What a great video this is! I even love the music, although it's 20 years earlier :-)

Enjoy fashions in Paris and then head over to British Pathe for more archival footage.

 Très élégant!

Just a Little Plug - We're Stars! The Toronto Star that is...

SLV and me :-) were featured in the Toronto Star newspaper.

The star's article focuses on achieving the vintage look with reproductions - a growing industry that I have recently embraced. As vintage clothing becomes more and more trendy, this also leads to a diminishing of available stock. Not to mention the sizes for a modern woman are not always available. This has led me to think about how I offer my dresses. 

Every week I receive an email from someone saying how they "love that dress, but do you have it in my size? Can I let out the waist?". Sadly, the answer is often a no, so it led me to reproducing those particular dresses to fit today's lady.

I'm proud to announce I now offer vintage reproduction dresses in modern fabrics and modern sizes. Any one of our dresses can be reproduced - just choose the dress and send me your measurements! Dresses start at $150.

Seamless Path to Vintage - Toronto Star Article

A Preppy Look

What is preppy? Short for the word 'preparatory' it refers to students who attend university-preparatory schools. Originating in the 1950s, they are characterized by fashion, speech and mannerism sub-culture. Often trying to be young adults, their fashion style has been poked fun at by being too conservative and snobbish.

I personally love the preppy look. It is indeed conservative, but it is also classic and timeless when worn properly. This corduroy dress from Mystique Vintage  has such a wonderful A-line cut and attached belt. Corduroy, argyle, wools and plaids are a traditional preppy fabric, often borrowing from the Brits. Well, the Brits knew a little something about classic lines and this 1950s dress with a pair of red pumps or equestrian boots would be just perfect thank you. Available for $89.

 

  

40 Years of Hippies

Official Woodstock '69 Poster

It's been 40 years since the infamous Woodstock Music & Art Fair, a.k.a. Woodstock. Billed as 'An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music", it was held from August 15 -18 on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York.

Generally regarded as one of the greatest and most pivotal moments in popular music history, Rolling Stone magazine considered it one of the top 50 moments that changed rock & roll.

It was an outdoor music festival that attracted 500 000 people. Janis Joplin comes to mind as I think of all the fabulous boho styles worn that weekend.

An ode to bohemians and hippies of 1969.
Looking at the photos from Elliot Landy's collection, some could easily have been taken yesterday.

Janis Joplin

Some inspiration for your next Woodstock moment.

Living in the 50s

The 1950s Look: Recreating the Fashions of the Fifties'

Every fashionista with her finger on the pulse knows that the Fifties are experiencing another style revival. Michelle Obama, already touted as a style icon to rival Jackie Kennedy, is just one of the high-profile personalities to take on the trend, wearing a high-waisted, full-skirted dress on her first day in the White House. Fifties aficionado Mike Brown’s book, The 1950s Look: Recreating the Fashions of the Fifties' is a timely guide to the trends and signature styles of the era - and how to translate them in 2009.

It’s not only the ‘First Lady of Fashion’ who’s channelling 1950s chic: Britney Spears dresses as a sexy fifties housewife in her video for ‘If You Seek Amy’, whilst Wonderbra have commissioned vintage-style icon Dita Von Teese to design an underwear range. And Kate Winslet's wardrobe in 'Revolutionary Road’, set in 1955, has received as many favourable reviews as the award-winning film itself.

The look, with its emphasis on curves, celebrates the female form. It is a perfect antidote to ‘size zero’ culture, replacing stick thin supermodels with the ample size-sixteen figures of Marilyn Monroe and Diana Dors.

For men the more informal fifties fashions are still widely seen. This was the decade that denim jeans arrived in the UK from the USA, and teaming jeans with a tee shirt or a leather motor-cycle jacket, as worn by Marlon Brando in the ‘Wild One’, will never go out of style.

Mike Brown deconstructs the key elements of iconic 50s fashions - from Audrey Hepburn chic to high school prom queen – and explains the origins of many items of clothing now taken for granted on today’s high street.

Over 144 pages, with more than 300 full colour photographs and pictures, readers can learn about the Trapeze dress and the Teddy Boys' quiff, pedal pushers and drain pipe trousers, and how women achieved that desirable hourglass shape. “Fifties fashion was feminine, flattering and - unlike the size zero silhouhette – actually achievable” Mike Brown says. “You may not have had the figure of Brigitte Bardot, but you could copy her look using corsets to cinch in your waist, full, layered skirts, and padded bras. There were even inflatable bras, which had an alarming habit of exploding in a clinch, or of taking on slow punctures, accompanied by strange noises! Thankfully, underwear technology has moved on, and the look can now be achieved less painfully.” 



Essential reading for a 50s fashionista! Available at most book stores now.